# Jacob Helberg **Jacob Helberg** (b. November 9, 1989, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France) is Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment in the second Trump administration — nominated December 10, 2024 and confirmed October 7, 2025 in the Senate's en bloc nominations package after a ten-month wait. Former Senior Advisor to the CEO at [[Palantir]], former Google News policy lead, and author of *The Wires of War* (2021), a book arguing that the US–China tech competition is the defining conflict of the era. ## Role in Trump II Helberg leads the State Department's economic security and technology diplomacy portfolio under Secretary [[Marco Rubio]]. His flagship initiative is [[Pax Silica]], a multilateral framework aimed at building a US-aligned semiconductor, AI, and critical-infrastructure supply chain among trusted partners. ## Why the vault cares Helberg is the vault's clearest case of the Silicon Valley–national security fusion becoming a government post. His [[Hill and Valley Forum]] (co-founded with [[Delian Asparouhov]] of [[Founders Fund]]) was the venue where venture capital and Congress agreed on the China-tech frame; his [[Palantir]] role and marriage to investor Keith Rabois (officiated by [[Sam Altman]]) put him inside the [[Peter Thiel]] network the vault maps; and [[Pax Silica]] — launched December 2025, its declaration signed by nine countries in March 2026 — is that network's foreign policy made official. The [[Jacob Helberg Dossier]] holds the structured record (holdings, donations, calendar, connections); this page is the summary. ## Background - Led Google News and information policy globally; oversaw elections integrity and countering foreign influence operations. - Served on the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission (2022–2024), advocating tariffs and industrial independence. - Senior Advisor to Palantir CEO [[Alex Karp]], where he focused on geopolitics and tech statecraft. - Early investor in a range of defense-adjacent and AI tech companies. - Author of *The Wires of War* (2021), which framed the internet as a geopolitical battleground between democratic and authoritarian tech stacks. - Co-founded the [[Hill and Valley Forum]] with [[Delian Asparouhov]] ([[Founders Fund]]) and Christian Garrett to fuse Silicon Valley with Washington on defense, AI, and China policy. ## See Also - [[Jacob Helberg Dossier]] — structured document collection (finance, ideology, inner circle, connections, holdings, timeline, quotes, calendar, events) - [[Hill and Valley Forum]] - [[Delian Asparouhov]] - [[Palantir]] - [[Alex Karp]] - [[All-In Podcast]]